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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Going Into the Closet

I've been working in the bedroom areas of the house the last couple weeks. Compared to the main living areas, these have been relatively straight forward. I put a coat of paint everywhere, remove and put up new curtains since the old ones for the most part were ripped, broken or missing, and replaced all the electrical outlets and switches. All of the latter are probably original to the house and are loose requiring careful positioning of the plug to get any juice, painted over in numerous colors and in a couple cases, weren't working due to loose wiring. The time consuming part of all of the bedrooms has been the closets.

Like everything else, the closets were disaster areas. The rods and meager shelving if any were all warped, falling off and missing. They were also very inefficient as storage areas and since this house lacks the storage area upstairs that our old house had, I needed to make them more efficient. So for the nursery and my daughter's rooms, I gutted them both completely and rebuilt them. Now they have lots of shelving and hanging space that makes the most of all the space inside a closet. Because the closet doors themselves were very rough as well, I have rebuilt them with new doors that required painting and there is nothing I dislike more in the painting world than painting closet doors. They have lots of nooks and crannies to get into with paint while avoiding runs and require multiple coats on all sides requiring lots of time. But I have persevered and they are done.

Now I am onto our bedroom which has two regular size reach in closets along one wall. Because the bedroom is quite a bit smaller than our last one which meant we couldn't put one of our dressers in it, it too needs better utilized storage space. After seeing a home remodeling show that turned two reach in closets like ours into a bank of built in closets, I have been trying to come up with a layout that I like. I think I have finally got it but unfortunately I really don't have a place to really build those built ins. I need an elevated flat surface like a workbench where I can glue up, nail and clamp them together while making sure they are square. I suppose I could do it on the unlevel and broken up concrete floor in the garage but as I get older, that appeals to me less and less these days.

So I did some research and have plans to make an old fashioned wooden 'butcher block' topped workbench to fit the bill. To do so requires the use of a jointer though which is something I don't have. I have lots of woodworking tools because I love working with wood but I've never owned a jointer. Mostly it is due to the lack of space I've had in my garage to store such a tool when not in use but with a two and a half car garage, one half more than I've had, I have the room. The other reason is that with a full time job, I couldn't justify the cost for only using it a couple times a year if that. But now with my new found freedom, I plan and hope to spend more time building things out of wood which makes the justification a little easier.

So I am on the lookout for a nice used jointer that I might pick up online somewhere or perhaps a new one if the price is right. I look forward to having one in my show and creating all those projects floating around in the back recesses of my mine. And for that, I have to thank our new house for getting me to go back into the closets.

Woody - It is nice to be able to comparison shop for tools. However when it comes to clothes or groceries, I just grab the first thing and pay whatever it costs just to get out of the store a little bit sooner.